The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Textbooks supply to be decentralised

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 05, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Textbooks supply to be decentralised

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUCHI, DEC. 4. The Tamil Nadu Textbook Corporation has made arrangements to ensure availability of revised standard VIII and Plus-2 textbooks in time next academic year, the Managing Director, Swaran Singh, has said.

There will be no shortage as printing of the Plus-2 textbooks for major subjects, both for Tamil and English mediums, has been completed. Books for standard VIII are under print, he said on Thursday.

Mr. Singh, who was on a visit here for an inspection, told reporters that though the anticipated demand for Plus-2 textbooks was around 35 lakh copies, the corporation printed about 47 lakhs to ensure that no student went without books. (The corporation move comes in the wake of a severe shortage reported earlier this academic year.)

Similarly, textbooks for standard X in the matriculation stream and various classes of the Anglo-Indian stream were printed in adequate numbers, much higher than the expected demand.

"We will ensure that the texts are made available in all districts without any problem," Mr. Singh said. The corporation would decentralise the distribution and supply network next year. Apart from direct supply to schools, it planned to increase the number of retailers.

Textbooks would also be made available through some cooperatives. There would be no restriction on the number of copies supplied to retailers. The distribution and supply would be monitored by nodal officers.The corporation printed about 1.54-crore copies of the latest edition of Science Tamil books to be supplied free to school students under a government initiative.

With this the total production of books by the corporation crossed eight crore copies.

Web site soon

It would soon launch its web site, in both English and the vernacular. It would provide comprehensive information on revision of textbooks, revised syllabi, distribution and selling points, price list and basic information on the contents of textbooks. The web site would also provide other useful links on education-related topics.

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